him to be a liberal, and he came out publicly saying, i'm a man of the left, in a speech with barbara jordan. >> host: did that hurt him? >> guest: no, because at that time he had stepped down as the anchor manin' 1981. he played mr. objective quite bell, and if you go to a doctor and are getting surgery you don't care if the doctor is a democrat or republican, but when he came out and voiced some disseptember own the vietnam war, it was the beginning of him editorializing, and today we see people in television who are editorializing all the time, and that's a slippery slope we're on now. and also, you see, with cronkite the berth of celebrities and television. where cronkite would go to a rally with senators and people running for president, everybody bum rushed them. they wanted to meet cop cite, not a senator from wisconsin. >> host: how would you describe him as a private person? >> guest: a lot of fun. he could not stand pompous people. at parties he would trunk a lot, sing old time songs, sometimes take part in a strange kind of strip tease act just to get people to crack up. but that'